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Auditors looked into deaths of patients under the care of UHL, at LPT’s community hospitals, and deaths in the community within 30 days of being discharged from UHL, between from June 20 and July 21, 2017.

The results showed that there were more deaths on a Monday than all other days. This was largely due to deaths in the community being at least double on a Monday.

An ambulance pulls into Leicester Royal Infirmary (Image: Chris Gordon)

The report said: “There were no obvious characteristics to this group that would be useful here. Cause of death was not available but 80 per cent died more than eight days after discharge.

“This effect should be examined further to understand why this is so marked and whether this is replicated throughout the year or not.”

Leicestershire Live asked Leicester’s hospitals why there are more deaths on a Monday.

Andrew Furlong, medical director at Leicester’s hospitals said: “To be honest, at the moment we don’t know the answer as to why.

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“It may just be a statistical variance picked up by the audit. We’ve asked Public Health to have a look at it and see if this is something because on the face of it we couldn’t identify a reason for it and neither could the auditors.

“One of the things we looked at was if patients had been discharged at the weekend but typically they’d been discharged 8-9 days before.”

Data also seemed to show that the surge in deaths was not related to access to primary care at the weekends.

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During the period covered by the audit, 319 people died. The figure excludes babies, children and deaths on mental health wards. Case records from 181 patients were reviewed, with 177 cases being given an overall care rating.

The report also damningly revealed that 143 patients – the vast majority of those looked at – were admitted to hospital unnecessarily.

Andrew Furlong added: “All audits of this kind identify similar issues and there are issues and we will deal with them as we always do.

“One thing we do need to do is better recognise people who are in the last few days of their life, we need to get better at having the very difficult conversations with people and their families so that plans are in place.

“Families are often not ready but having open and honest conversations about death and how people want to die and where will help us make improvements in the care of patients in their last few days.